Poetry

The Underground Campus

The underground campus—that safe haven where mind-blowing chemical
transactions are going down all the time—is a place few ever see.

That’s too bad because we spend much of our day beating its upper surface with the bottoms of our shoes.

Yes, I’m talking here about the literal underground campus, the part
of Luther College where living things are surrounded by more dirt and
stone than air.

The perfectly obvious reason we rarely see that environment is that
we need air to live. We only put people in the ground when what’s left
of them won’t be needing oxygen any more.

But put on that funky imagination hat of yours for a few minutes and
travel with me down the proverbial rabbit hole for a quick adventure in
underland. For the sake of easing our transport, let’s imagine that
like Alice, for our journey we get very, very tiny.

As we shrink down to the size where we disappear into the turf grass
on the bell green to venture downward, we immediately feel topsy turvy.
Under all that grass is its pale, thin, slightly longer and more
twisted double, growing in reverse. A grass plant is a bit like Johnny
Depp Siamese-twinned to Brad Pitt by the soles of his feet. We are used
to seeing the green, wide-bodied Brad Pitt side of grass that stretches
always toward the sun. But before that side can start growing, its flip
Johnny Depp side must ease twisty roots away from the light, down into
the soil.

If big picture vision were allowed us on this journey, we would now
see the upside-down canopy of tree roots all across campus spreading
out around us, and stretching to astonishing depths below the tips of
the grass roots.

The nature of turf grass as well as for trees is to roughly equal
the living mass above and below ground, so for every massive oak,
maple, cottonwood and pine you used to see stretching above you on your
jog-trot between classes there is now a root mass of equal size
stretching below into the darkness.

Had we made our underground sightseeing trip under Anderson Prairie,
an even bigger surprise would wait for us. Instead of inches of roots
anchoring inches of grass, as on the lawn, the four to six feet of
prairie grass is anchored by 12 to 18 feet of roots. Prairie puts two
to three times as much energy below ground as above.

But big picture vision and cross-campus leaps are emphatically not
allowed. In fact, what with all this dirt, it’s getting dark, and more
and more crowded as we go. Within seconds we can see little. To go
forward we might as well forget about those feet of ours. Transport has
now become a scratch, wriggle, and squirm operation where head first is
clearly superior to feet first.

The tight squeeze can’t be blamed only on geology. It’s crowded
underground. The 13-lined ground squirrels that poke their heads out of
holes near the library and which you used to consider cute in your
large aboveground life are massive, top-of-the-food-chain monsters down
here. Besides grass and roots, they gobble earthworms, wireworms,
caterpillars, beetles, ants and insect eggs. That list describes the
bigger company you are now jostling as we make our way.

But pull your magnifying glass out of your very, very tiny pocket
and, if we can find a light, you’ll see that as you go smaller the
population climbs: microbes in their thousands and bacteria in their
billions press around you.

In every square foot of highly active, organic soil, there can be five pounds of animal life, most of it incredibly small.

Roots and fungal hyphae weave the soil together like a net. At this
tiny level, creatures swarm in what’s called the “rhizosphere,” a
frantically busy little environment emanating out from each root.

It’s at this tiny not-easily-seen level that all the complicated
chemical dealing goes on underground. Roots release acid, sugar and
water, trading them to microorganisms for the vitamins, hormones,
antibiotics and minerals they give in return.

If we have been lucky enough to find a little patch of campus lawn
that the broadleaf herbicide has missed, we might come across the roots
of clover. Clover and other legumes develop root lumps that house
bacteria which transform inert atmospheric nitrogen into the
fertilizing nitrogen compounds plants need. More microscopic dealing:
the plant swaps home, the bacteria swaps food.

As the snow starts to fall, the temperature sinks below freezing and
the leafy, buzzing world aboveground grows bare and quiet, soil around
us remains active. In this sheltered space plants have stored nutrients
for next spring, insects have deposited eggs or larva for a future
hatch, and amphibians and mammals (like those ground squirrels) have
burrowed in for a quiet season of sleep. It’s one happening scene.

But don’t panic. We can come out now, dust off, and expand back to
our normal—wait, from our new underground perspective make that
Jurassic—size.

And don’t feel sorry that you’ve missed the underground campus up
until today. It’s probably not your kind of place. But don’t dismiss
its importance. As you can tell, its dark economy of exchanges is where
aboveground life begins.